Gamification by Design

What do Foursquare, Zynga, Nike+, and Groupon have in common? These and many other brands use gamification to deliver a sticky, viral, and engaging experience to their customers. This book provides the design strategy and tactics you need to integrate game mechanics into any kind of consumer-facing website or mobile app. Learn how to use core game concepts, design patterns, and meaningful code samples to a create fun and captivating social environment.

Whether you’re an executive, developer, producer, or product specialist, Gamification by Design will show you how game mechanics can help you build customer loyalty.

• Discover the motivational framework game designers use to segment and engage consumers
• Understand core game mechanics such as points, badges, levels, challenges, and leaderboards
• Engage your consumers with reward structures, positive reinforcement, and feedback loops
• Combine game mechanics with social interaction for activities such as collecting, gifting, heroism, and status
• Dive into case studies on Nike and Yahoo!, and analyze interactions at Google, Facebook, and Zynga
• Get the architecture and code to gamify a basic consumer site, and learn how to use mainstream gamification APIs from Badgeville

“Turning applications into games is a huge trend. This book does a great job of identifying the core lasting principals you need to inspire your users to visit again and again.”

—Adam Loving

Freelance Social Game Developer and founder of Twibes Twitter Groups

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Foundations

Chapter 2. Player Motivation

Chapter 3. Game Mechanics: Designing for Engagement (Part I)

Chapter 4. Game Mechanics: Designing for Engagement (Part II)

Chapter 5. Game Mechanics and Dynamics in Greater Depth

Chapter 6. Gamification Case Studies

Chapter 7. Tutorial: Coding Basic Game Mechanics

Chapter 8. Tutorial: Using an Instant Gamification Platform

About the Authors

Gabe Zichermann is an author, public speaker, serial entrepreneur, and the foremost expert on the subject of gamification. His book, Game-Based Marketing (Wiley, 4/2010) has achieved critical and industry acclaim for its detailed look at innovators who blend the power of games with brand strategy. Zichermann is also the author of the Gamification Blog at http://gamification.co and chair of the Gamification Summit and Workshops.

Christopher Cunningham is a software architect and developer who helped found ChroniQL, an early gamification solution; beamME, a mobile social application; and TrekMail, a breakthrough mobile email/text application. Christopher has deep expertise with agile development processes and distributed team management.